


Romantic in the renaissance

by myoue



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Love Letters, M/M, Museums, Mutual Pining, victor's love is romanticism 101
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 21:23:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15470349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: From a young age, Victor has an unrequited love with romance, striving for a threesome with excitement. But with a heavy heart, realizes he’s monogamous as hell.





	Romantic in the renaissance

**Author's Note:**

> happy (belated) bday to my girl [foreverautumn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverautumn/pseuds/foreverautumn)!!! there is a totally unecessary 'please fuck me' scene at the end bc she told me in confidence that these are always her favourite scenes in fics so that's for her.

 

Coming into his free skate at Worlds with a great score, a boy from Japan with bouncy black hair and a skyblue costume so loose it floats around him, happens to stare right at Victor during the middle of his program. Victor gets a magnificent close up when the boy skates right by him in a backwards crossover, exquisite and skin touched a flushing rouge.

Victor had decided to hang out at the barrier in an act of avoidance more than anything. The music had drawn him in—Chopin’s Waltz in B minor, so sweet and swelling. Its soft melancholy makes it a good piece; the start of something new without clear direction. The lack of crescendos make it harder to insert jumps on beat, but at this age it doesn’t seem to be the point. Victor adores this—this romanticism.

He leans forward onto his stomach, letting his arm hang over the barrier, reaching out slowly into the rink towards… towards… he’s not sure. Something feels like it’s calling to him, until he’s snatched back by the person next to him.

“Victor, what the hell are you doing?”

Oh. He hadn’t meant to do that.

The boy is pretty far away. But with his gaze still in Victor’s direction, he immediately trips over himself and eats ice.

Victor winces. That might have been his fault.

-

Instead of turning on the AC, Victor opens up all the windows when the weather gets to a stifling heat. He’s not sure what the concept of humidity really entails besides “it’s hotter than it is” because he’s not at all used to it. But his tank top is light cotton and loose, almost floating off him, and there’s hardly any wind from the window. Things are heavy and still.

He’s moved out and there’s no one to criticize him for exposing himself when the tank falls below the appropriate level of his nipples. There’s no one to tell him that the label on his mid-back is sticking out and needs help tucking back in.

“Let’s catch a movie,” Victor suggests when the blatant staring starts to piss him off. “You don’t like plays so…”

“But you’re showing so much skin,” they say like they have a high fever and expect Victor to do something about this.

Yes, he wants something for sure. Victor was told once or twice before that he has nice collarbones so he likes to use them to his advantage.

“The theatre has AC,” Victor states.

“I’ll cool you down.”

Victor pushes them aside as he gets up to change. “That’s not even close to what you’re supposed to say.”

In what ways can he equivocate a character’s arc of warming stoicism over the two hour runtime to a waning Ina Bauer? Maybe it’s an excuse to take a break for two hours or so under the guise that it imbues some kind of creative inspiration for him. Maybe he can’t bring himself to say the company of his date alone is worth it.

Either way, they’re in the doorway now ready to leave. The guy is smoothing out the folds on Victor’s shirt for him, patting him affectionately on the chest, and Victor has the urge to take all his clothes off again. He can earn another gold for a winning program loosely manufactured on microcosms of romance.

“You know I love you, Victor.”

“I do, too,” Victor says.

He’s obsessed with other people’s storylines, their hopes and dreams, wishing they had enough colour and life and extravagance to share with him for his enjoyment. How selfish it is to be kept all to themselves.

Mila sees right through him, slouched over the rink barrier with her phone out, half paying attention to Victor but mostly paying attention to her boyfriend.

“I think I’m on the verge of losing it,” he tells her, squinting down at the chipped ice that he digs his skate into. “Any day now.”

“Are they annoying?” she asks.

If there’s anything that’s annoying, it’s that they love Victor _and_ … everything… _and_ they love lying. In fact, they don’t actually like having him around. They don’t really agree with any of Victor’s half baked opinions. Charge him with a crime. Push him against the wall. People are so casual with their words, it becomes sickening. They point out the mundane obvious, repeating things other people already say, acting out what other people do.

It feels cold even though it’s summer. A cold sweat, maybe. Is this normal conflict? Or normal living? Or is this Victor not understanding other people, not knowing how to settle for less than 150%, how to live and let live?

“Maybe those are their real opinions. But you just aren’t listening to them,” Mila says.

He’s beyond annoyed, guilt-ridden, and weirdly drained. He can’t explain it. He’ll turn his rising blood pressure into something useful, probably. And he loves Mila to death, but she’s not supposed to be there with him at 4PM on a day off when he’s lying lazily in bed with hair over his face or 4AM on a weekday staring up at the ceiling and searching for silence in the downtown junction of a major city.

“I think you’ve got to lower your standards a little,” Mila tells him, wise beyond her years and flicking mindlessly up her Instagram feed. “Or your… expectations? You’ve got to understand. That’s just how people are. Boring. Shit companions. And then we all die.”

“How can a seventeen year old be giving up on life and love already?”

Victor has spent two decades not getting used to anything, expecting and expecting. Stagnation will quite seriously kill him before he can die.

-

He wants to take a long, long holiday. Somewhere nice. Somewhere tropical. Somewhere completely opposite from here.

He wants to be in the sun, lying in someone’s arms as they stroke his hair and hum simple melodies in his ear. It’s warm but there’s a breeze.

He feels sleepy, relaxed. He’ll wear that shirt that they really like on him—that Hawaiian shirt with the cargo shorts that makes them laugh really hard whenever they look at him because he looks so much like a dad. He wants to be one someday. His current date spent an hour explaining the political tensions between Ukraine and Russia.

Not enough people are backloading their programs, he worries to Victor while the skates that dangle off his fingers haven’t been sharpened in an offensive amount of time. Victor never jumps with an arm over his head or performs with all quads even though he can land them. There’s a points system for a reason. Why not keep breaking records if he can do it? Is he cutting the other skaters slack? Is he looking down on them, the ones who admire him and work so hard and jump that extra half turn before they’re of senior age because it’s what’s expected of them now?

He and Victor aren’t quite dating yet, so Victor asks very politely for a nude and the conversation derails from there.

Let them jump the extra half turn if their little bodies can do it, Victor retorts. He’s older and more experienced and lately he’s becoming overrun with fear. He’s scared of not feeling, dreading what will happen when his love and passion for immersing himself in every little detail and doing everything right means he no longer finds himself fascinated. What will happen when he no longer wants? When he can no longer jump at all—what will he have left?

“Honestly, Victor. Some people have standards. They don’t want to send or be sent dick pics.”

Georgi also goes to church every Sunday and Victor pretends like he hasn’t received anything unsolicited and accidental on a late night from Georgi’s phone.

“I’m just looking out for you, Victor. You don’t want to be lonely for the rest of your life, do you? Take it from me. You don’t.”

-

There was once a boy who’d looked so shocked and dishevelled to see Victor at the sink in the bathroom during one of the Four Continents tournaments, it was as if he’d accidentally walked in on Victor’s unlocked stall instead. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, pressing a hand to the side of his glasses, saying so shyly, “Oh, h-h-hi, Victor.” But he didn’t turn around and leave. He didn’t go to one of the urinals. He was wearing a white team jacket, mouth parting into a hesitant, shimmery little laugh. “You, you know, I still keep being asked about when you reached out into the rink that one time… do you remember that? When that happened?”

He did remember. “Oh, yeah, that? Wow, how long ago was that? Actually, I still feel pretty bad. I distracted the poor boy. He’d taken a pretty nasty fall.”

Victor can’t remember names and faces unless he works really hard at it. But by now, he understands pretty well that he has to make a conscious effort. He’s introduced to way too many people, people who he’ll never see again, who won’t follow him as far as he goes, whose significance comes in and out of Victor’s life as just another conversation and not any concrete entity.

“Wait, where exactly does he go after his performances?”

“Who?” Georgi is currently undergoing whiplash as he cleans his skates, whose certain nighttime pictures will make it so his name and face will never be forgotten in Victor’s mind no matter how hard he tries to dissociate them. “Are we still talking about the same guy?”

“Hmm…”

The more Victor thinks about something, the more it eludes him, leaning back on the bench and eyes going cross-eyed at the ceiling.

“That… the boy. I think… he’s probably twenty-something by now…”

-

There’s a special art exhibit that’s only going to be in the city for a month.

And so are they— _only in the city for a little while, that is_ —being the response he gets back. Yeah, that’s true. But maybe that’s all the more reason why it feels like such a fleeting opportunity and Victor’s gotta go see it before he misses his chance in this lifetime.

After they leave practice together from the local rink, he pays for two tickets on his phone on the way there.

It’s a cool weekday evening and the museum is far emptier. He prefers it like this. Casual and just a little bit surreal. It feels like something’s going to happen even though nothing ever does—like the rink after it’s been cordoned off for private practice and there’s nobody except him and a few colleagues, or nighttime walks with a cap and sunglasses through a foreign town where no one would recognize him anyway. Sometimes he ends up wishing some stranger would recognize him, sternly sit him down, and offer a lecture about the importance of getting enough iron from foods because he’s looking too pale these days. And he’ll agree. That’s what the sun on his future holiday is going to be for, Victor thinks blissfully.

“Uh, what kind of exhibit is this supposed to be?” a certain Yuuri Katsuki beside him wonders. They know each other vaguely from the rinkside.

“It’s…” Victor trails off, glancing down at the pamphlet in his hands with a shiny black and white minimalist design and teeny tiny wording, feeling like a hologram might pop out of it at the slightest touch. “...It’s modern art.”

“Oh.”

“I guess I should’ve told you before we came.”

Yuuri shakes his head. He holds onto the ends of his sleeves with nervous fingers. “No, it’s fine. Modern art is fine. It’s not like I wouldn’t want to go if I’d known... I was just curious. I mean—there’s not much you could say that would make me, uhh... well! I’d say yes to you… regardless.”

“Really? Is modern art your thing?”

“Um…” Yuuri looks like he doesn’t know what to say after that. “Not—it’s not really my thing.”

“What’s your thing then, Yuuri Katsuki?”

“Uh.” He seems to bite his lip. “Spontaneous. Nights. Out?”

“I never pegged you as someone spontaneous,” Victor says, amused.

“I’m only sometimes. When the time is right.”

Yuuri’s hair falls over his eyes. Spontaneous—like how Jackson Pollock is spontaneous? Or Picasso?

It might have been better if they went to see some more traditional paintings after all, with brushstrokes that take a lifetime to perfect, instead of things that seemingly come from nothing—these strangely shaped sculptures and substances dripping from the walls.

But then, Victor thinks, things that are less spontaneous aren’t all that interesting. Yuuri had waited with Victor on the bench after their communal practice, with all his stuff hanging from his arms, until Victor was done packing up his skates. After listening to Victor monologue about museums and art and intellectualism the whole time, Yuuri had asked him if he wanted to go, if they could go together, they could find out if art is really dead. It sounded like a bit of a crisis, and Yuuri had said that with such a shy smile that he couldn’t seem to help. And Victor, having purposely taken his time with his skates, had thought: oh, thank god.

Yuuri has a tendency to go at his own pace, walking off from whatever it is they’re looking at, so Victor finds he has to play catch up.

His thoughts have been straying. Victor wonders about what looks like vegetable oil splashed across the ceiling and on the floor, if he’s thinking more about how to think about all these things rather than actually thinking about it.

He bumps into Yuuri’s shoulder by accident, closing a hand around Yuuri’s elbow, loose, in a moment of spontaneity, without thinking about it, pretending like that’s what he’d meant to do the whole time. Yuuri’s skin is soft and Victor’s grip is weak.

Yuuri’s gait slows down, purposefully taking a longer time now with each display, with pink cheeks and a response that misses its beat.

“Oh,” he half-exclaims in either wonderment or realization. There’s something swirling around in Yuuri’s head, like cogs of a machine.

_Oh_. Victor blinks. The arm is too forward. Right.

“Um,” Victor says.

It’s not that. It’s just that even though they’re on a first date—this is a date right?—there’s some part of Victor that still wants to pretend like they’re already a couple. His heart is yearning and he feels a little deprived for understanding. He wants to be cultured and satiated. And they can skip all the bullshit, if that’s okay?

“...Yeah.”

Yuuri squints, not necessarily at Victor. He licks his lips. He’s nervous. He’s cute.

_And he would say yes to Victor regardless_.

Regardless of… what, exactly?

“How are you finding it?” Victor decides to let go of Yuuri’s arm to teeter around him, on the tips of his toes and hands clasped around his back. He smiles, searching for the wonderment in Yuuri’s face again but what he gets is a dazed look and a hand rubbing at the elbow Victor had just abandoned. “Modern art? Is it starting to grow on you?”

“It’s pretty weird,” Yuuri admits, looking just as unconvinced as he sounds.

“Weird in a good way? Or a bad way?”

“Weird in a weird way.”

“Ah.”

“Not that weird is bad.”

“Yes. I think so too.”

“Reminds me a little of your programs,” Yuuri blurts.

“Huh?” Victor laughs, having no idea what Yuuri means by that. “Weird, huh? Is this what you think of when you see my beautiful and carefully crafted choreography? Like… mannequins hanging from the ceiling with detached limbs?”

“No!” Yuuri exclaims so loud he looks afraid of going over the museum’s stated decibel limit.

“Then?”

Yuuri has his hands up in defence, expression worrying. “I meant, it’s similar to your programs because… they’re interesting and provocative and, well, you can clearly see the passion. I remember you saying that you take parts of what you see from a bunch of different things, things that you love, and then put them into your programs.”

“You heard that?” Victor smiles. From some interview that he did ages ago. “There’s something so intriguing about the most mundane things, I guess. In places that you would never suspect.”

“Yes!” Yuuri exclaims, “After you said that, I started noticing more. Like, watching people filing into a line to walk around a large puddle on the sidewalk. Or someone in a business suit walking slowly, with a little extra swing in their step, that you can tell doesn’t have a destination in mind.”

“Oh! You get it. Exactly. Everyday life has so much energy, doesn’t it?”

Yuuri nods. “I’ve always thought your programs are full of it—energy, feeling, sincerity… everything in between. To me, they’re the best. You’re… my… well, your programs just are,” he says, leaving no room for debate. “That’s how I feel about them. About your programs. About you.”

“About me?”

“You… well, you...”

“Do you think of me as some sort of genius?” Victor asks, touching a finger to his face. “Because everybody else seems to.” He doesn’t feel like a genius most of the time.

“Yeah... I do think that.”

“You’re a fan of me, right? Where can I improve? In your humble, well-informed opinion?”

Yuuri’s eyebrows knit together, distancing himself into the pull of an interesting something on the wall. “I think you’re… way too out of reach for me to offer anything of use.”

There’s nothing of interest on the wall so it feels like more of an excuse than anything, like there’s something brewing underneath the surface of what Yuuri really wants to say, on the tip of his tongue and just out of reach of his fingertips, that convinces Victor of Yuuri’s dissatisfaction of his own answer. Yuuri can think of something good. Victor wants to push. And if Yuuri could tell Victor when he finally thinks of it...

They pass by a mannequin with one arm and one leg out each stretched out, standing balanced on a wooden tip. Yuuri idly tells him about how he used to train exclusively in ballet before he started skating. It was good. It was freeing. But, and this is a little snooty of him, he says, he was always attracted to more of an international stage. “Actually, I think it’d be really cool if you could land five quad axels in competition,” he comments.

Victor laughs a bit at that. Not to mention five in a row is illegal. “I’ve tried doing the impossible before. It’s pretty hard.”

But it’s not like Victor is saying that in rejection, just being matter-of-fact.

“Y-Yeah? I guess it is impossible.”

Yuuri goes through a lot of different breathing noises, nervous inhales, indignance, and holding his breath in before letting it out.

He was apparently disqualified a bunch of times in ballet competitions for doing illegal moves. When he was younger, he had a tendency to become anxious and catastrophic and too focused on how he looked instead of how he felt.

Yuuri looks up at Victor with eyes of hope, no matter the practical reality of any such ideas.

“If I ever see a quad axel successfully landed in competition, I think I’ll just about die.”

“Huh,” Victor says curiously.

Perhaps it’s impossible to foster a certain romantic mood after all, not romantic in the modern sense but in the renaissance sense. Even nowadays, the debate surrounding Mona Lisa’s smile still goes on in certain circles and concerned parties—Is she really smiling? Is it genuine? Is she happy?—as if the speculation itself holds all the answers relevant to their lives five hundred years later. Victor, never so much an art man, had never expected to get in on the debate himself. But he’s not cruel nor cynical. Such a split second expression in real life still takes hours, days, years to paint. And he’s really hoping it is a smile.

-

Maybe just for fun, Victor brings up the idea of including a quad axel in his next program to Yakov and is promptly told to go fuck himself.

-

In the middle of the afternoon of what would be a perfectly sunny and cloudless blue outside, two shaking hands shove rather insistently a piece of light brown folded cardstock towards him. It has a small siberian husky and pretty flowers printed on the outside and, as Victor holds it up curiously, smells fresh like cool sprayed mint. And then Yuuri is walking too quickly away for Victor to be able to say anything.

_I know you like dogs so I’m trying my best to exploit that, sorry..._ explains the inside of the card in Yuuri’s careful English cursive, _I wanted to thank you for asking me out the other day. I had a lot of fun and you looked_ ~~ _handsome_ _attractive_~~ _great, as always. I know letter writing is a bit of an outdated art form so I managed this card instead. I had to hand this to you in person because I started getting antsy by myself, like I might explode, and I didn’t think I could tell you any of these things if not like this. It doesn’t matter how often I think my feelings through and try to sort them out into something coherent, it’s always a mess again by the time I’m in front of you. I end up simply staring in blissful adoration at you, waiting anxiously to hear for what you have to say, and then missing my cue to say something back. I’m not used to talking with you and frankly I don’t know when I’ll ever be. Perhaps never. Not if you keep going as you are—mesmerizing and too kind to call me out on any of this. Nevertheless, this card is my confession to you. But it’s not just because of the other day. I’ve always liked you. I want you to know that and I hope you understand. Thanks for reading... Sincerely, yours._

-

The next of his falls is painful. His knees hurt. The ice sounds like it’s cracking beneath him and he’ll sooner sink to the bottom of the rink than complete this jump, further and further until there’s nowhere left to go.

“Vitya, you’re a world champion but did you completely forget how to fall? Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a hospital? Why are you jumping so hard?”

Victor had given Yakov a heads up before so he figures there’s no harm done if he sneaks one beautiful quad in during practice.

And, as if there’s a light bulb that turns on and simultaneously blows out from a sudden power surge, Yakov realizes right then. “God, you’re trying the quad axel! ...Are you crazy! That’s off-limits unless you’re that keen on breaking your back and committing to an early death. Vitya, I don’t want you hurting yourself. I mean it!”

It’s a thinly veiled insult considering Victor is in his late twenties and way past the point of setting records and doing insane things with the flexibility of his back bone. He can’t recover as easily and that frustrates him. “I know of at least one person who _would_ die to see me land this,” Victor says, miffed.

When things aren’t going his way and he’s feeling down about it, Victor likes to look up Yuuri Katsuki of Japan on Youtube, with programs spanning back ten or so years. “You’re into beautiful Japanese boys now?” Mila says, sidling up next to him and watching his phone.

“Maybe. Ah, this is one of his… more unfortunate ones,” Victor says sadly, seeing Yuuri twenty points behind the next person. Hearing the sharp audible gasps against the soft piano and the difficulty on his heart when a skater collapses is what Victor lives for. It’s so heartbreaking, but so… exciting. He can’t seem to take his eyes off Yuuri’s quivering lip and unwavering form. “Is it a Japanese thing to keep getting up and always keep going?” he wonders.

Mila hums. “Yeah, I think it is. But it’s probably only a Yuuri Katsuki thing to have that killer expression on after he does.”

Victor finds himself fantasizing about that expression.

Yuuri’s flubs manage to be so majestic, on his knees sliding across the ice, leant back slightly with eyes closed in a momentary peace that Victor is sure people can feel from home. There’s this aura, this voice about him. He moves so luxuriously. Like every point is smooth and purposeful and intense. He’s fifteenth century regal wrapped in twenty-first century Versace.

Within the next beat, the Yuuri on his phone is transitioning back to his feet, controlled irritation and unapologetic. Something gets caught in Victor’s throat, watching mesmerized and rooting for the Yuuri that will follow that triple axel over and over until he lands it properly without deduction and won’t take no for an answer.

-

It really is cloudless outside. Victor vaguely follows in the direction that Yuuri had scurried off in. But Victor is more mindless about it, because he’s not at all expecting to actually happen upon Yuuri, and because he wants to consolidate in his head, in his feelings, what he’d just read.

But it turns out he doesn’t have to go far. Yuuri is sitting on a park bench just outside the building, with his head slightly down and palms open on his lap.

He’s crying, Victor realizes, when he gets a little closer. He’s not sure if he should keep walking, give Yuuri some space, turn around and leave in the other direction, or take a seat so it looks like they’re both waiting together for something.

But Yuuri isn’t sobbing violently. He’s quiet and still, unmoving, expression eerily calm, like nothing is happening at all. He waits patiently for the tears to run their course, even when they fall so carefully down his face, and the small wet sniffs wrack into tiny vibrated shakes in his shoulders.

Victor pushes through the guilt of invading a private moment because he feels like he needs to set something straight no matter what. Even if it’s more rude than anything, or if it will ultimately turn him off completely from wanting to associate with Victor in the end. Victor can’t, in a million years, just walk away. He wishes he had some tissues on hand with him.

“I’m sorry,” Victor says when he sits down on the bench, maybe a foot away. He’s apologizing for more than just disturbing Yuuri. Sometimes the youth need occasions to cry—that’s what he was told. But it still breaks his heart to watch. He has the folded card still in his hand. “...And also thank you. Ahh, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I rejected you—”

“No. I know.” Yuuri doesn’t look at him. He stares down hard at the ground, blinking through his tears, one hand overturned, one hand fisted in his lap. “It’s—it’s nothing you did. I’m the one who ran away after all. I just—I cry easily and can’t really think. It’s nothing. I mean, it’s not… it’s no big deal. I’m… a little embarrassed with what I wrote. And I don’t think I could’ve handled it if you… if you were to have… sorry. I mean, I’m sorry that I’m doing this now. Here. In front of you. Sorry.”

The tears and the sniffs don’t stop, and Yuuri brings a hand up to cover his nose, devastated at his own imagination.

Victor places a hand on Yuuri’s on his lap and squeezes. He’s not sure if he’s the right person for this, if it should be him attempting to comfort Yuuri at all if he’s the cause of the distress in the first place. He doesn’t know what’s right, what could make this better, what words to say.

When it seems the hand is okay, when Yuuri flips his hand over to squeeze back to let him know it’s fine, Victor shifts himself over and pulls Yuuri into a hug.

Yuuri seems entirely frozen. His arms don’t quite know what they want to do.

“Don’t apologize,” Victor says in somewhat of hurry, not really finding better words that he can say. “I like you a lot, actually. You’re… a one of a kind. You’re beautiful. A true modern renaissance, unlike those weird overrated sculptures we went to see.”

He doesn’t know what exactly this is, why it feels like he needs desperately to convince Yuuri that he isn’t ignorant or disinterested. If he were to walk away from this whole thing without saying anything at all, the idea that Yuuri will misunderstand Victor’s feelings will dig at him. It doesn’t feel good at all. He doesn’t think he would ever forgive himself.

Yuuri finally does hug him back, arms circling around him, and it sets a wave of relief in him. Yuuri sniffs one final time, using Victor’s shoulder as a tissue box. It doesn’t feel like the tears are close to slowing, but Victor’s spiked with warmth when Yuuri manages to laugh lightly against him. “You make it so hard not to like you. Are you even real?”

“Probably?” Victor says quizzically.

Yuuri puts his hand on Victor’s leg, leans back but scooches just a little bit closer. He still has tears streaming down his face when he looks at Victor. Don’t cry, Victor thinks, please don’t cry for me. Yuuri comes closer, closer, slowly, slowly, to kiss him, sliding a hand delicately over his shoulder.

It feels so good, so much so that his eyes close naturally and his lips form to match Yuuri's moving against him so sweetly. Victor had forgotten what it was like to feel this good. Comforting instead of obligated. He finds himself almost winded with oversense, so whimsically confused, thinking why it seems like the quad axel is not actually Yuuri’s dying wish, but this. But maybe that's Victor giving himself too much credit.

“Thank you, I’m so happy...”

_-_

There’s a light twinkling sound as soon as he walks in along with the smell of freshly cut grass after a rainfall. Wet but clean and alive and bustling—a scent that he quite likes because both life and authentic weather tend to come scarcely during his harshest training months on the ice.

Though, flowers aren’t the only thing in this shop. There are garden plants and windowsill vegetables and a functioning greenhouse if you go out through the back door, apparently offering a service for custom cut hedges for those with manicured lawns. Everything sits on brick ledges with long flower strings hung high from the ceiling between art nouveau decor and guarded by stylishly cut white lattice.

Victor had only come in for the flowers. But he’s not even sure what kind.

With all the vocabulary he has, he explains to the florist the sort of feeling he’s going for with flower language. Well, the occasion is—everyday, he says. The kind of person they’re going to—some dastardly combination of moody, delicate, and wild. Like a shot of tequila with salt on the rim on an otherwise tepid tuesday night.

“A dozen red roses then, please,” Victor decides. It’s not too original after all.

“Oh, that’s one lucky girl,” the florist says with a smile, going to fetch for the flowers and his choice of ribbon.

“If these end up being delivered to a girl, I’ll have to come back for a replacement order.”

While the stems are busy being cut into, Victor brings out a card and pen he’d brought with him to write against the counter. Very carefully, he draws a pair of glasses on the printed shiba inu on the front of the card before turning to the inside.

_Dear Mr. Yuuri Katsuki, I hope you’re well. Please accept these flowers from me. They’re nice, aren’t they? Their lifespan isn’t all that long but you can look at them for now and think pretty things and feel all my love._

I kind of feel like... I’ve been a fool for the longest time. Like I’ve been wasting my life. Time is precious. But I didn’t know what I wanted. And I’m bad at writing letters, sorry.

_Why is it we keep doing these things that are terribly out of style? —VN ♥_

_-_

Perhaps Victor had drunk too much himself already; this place being far too fancy; an upscale restaurant where bread and butter is nowhere to be found. It’s not even the sort of aura that Yuuri prefers, let alone the kind that he would feel on the right side of loosened up in and in the mood to confess.

But there’s something about it—the lavishness of dressing up in hairspray and cufflinks, the spectacle, the idea of finding something blinding and sparkling in his decadent dessert or his rose champagne glass. Victor had gone to powder his nose in the bathroom at least once each given course, coming back brighter and brighter and seeming suspiciously ill by Yuuri’s following gaze on his skin. But of course by the time he sits down, the napkin ring is still always a napkin ring and just about the only type of gold Victor hasn’t been subconsciously uncrossing his fingers for.

“You’re looking so good today, love,” Victor says, attempting to eye Yuuri with a certain sense of debauchery, tipping his cup into his mouth. Victor can barely keep himself from making a scene.

“We’re in a place like this and you’ve been drinking ice water for the past hour,” Yuuri tells him, and Victor does notice it condensating all over his hands. “If you’re going to get me drunk it has to be more of a collaborative effort, I think.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Victor exclaims with another pop of the cork and his ice water pushed to the side. Yuuri eyes him back, fingers tapping against his glass.

When he thinks of Yuuri, betrothed and committed and beautifully wedded white, it’s a wonderful dream he’s curated from #RelationshipGoals and a far too healthy fear of missing out.

He wants to take a delicious sip and accidentally choke on the rest of his life. He’s being greedy and he knows it. Yuuri is nothing short of a miracle for putting up with him—floating and fleeting and free to choose, and by chance choosing Victor every time.

How’s the quad axel coming along? Yuuri asks him, circling the tip of his glass with his finger. It’s going well, Victor replies easily. _Well_ —it’s going well as in he’s got the base mechanics of it, but his hips don’t cooperate the way he wants and consistent momentum has become a struggle. He can land it but not reliably enough. Yakov ordered him not to put so much pressure on his knee so as not to fuck it up further. And Victor will give Yuuri a patient smile, taking a bit of his own hair in his fingers, commenting how deeply silver it is, that it’s his natural colour, that you won’t be able to tell when it starts fading to grey.

“You’re gorgeous, Yuuri. I wish you could see what I see.”

They both take their wallets out at the same time, except Victor thrusts his card towards the waiter in a race for first, at the same time as reaching his other arm across the table, placing his hand gently against Yuuri’s and giving him a cherished smile.

Yuuri frowns at him.

“It’s either this or dine and dash,” Victor tells him.

“I have _money_ —”

Victor considers saying “ _Put it on my tab_ ” instead but he doesn’t think that would put Yuuri on his good side at all.

“You let me pay for you in other places,” Victor quips.

“That’s because the total comes out to like twenty euros.”

“There’s no difference between twenty and one-fifty.”

“...There’s a huge difference! I’m not going to kiss you just because you pay for me,” Yuuri says, snippy.

Right in front of the server and everything, Yuuri sucks in his lip about this. Victor returns the frown.

But Yuuri doesn’t notice, or pretends he doesn’t, in favour of his obstinance. “So, I’m worth twenty but not one-fifty?” Victor says.

“ _That’s_ what you take away from that?”

This place is really that bad, huh? Too glitzy? He knew it. The rest of the night becomes mostly wordless, in a slow reconnaissance for sobriety.

Yuuri tucks in the edges of his jacket once he realizes it’s drizzling outside, stepping out under the awning of the restaurant doorstep with Victor.

They’ll have to call a car because neither of them thought to bring an umbrella. Victor already has his phone to his ear waiting for the ringing in his head to stop. That’s fine. They can wait. He’s been waiting his whole life, practically. He’s used to it. He’s vaguely aware of the slide of a finger sneaking underneath the lapel of his blazer, fingering against his tie, straightening it just slightly, mindlessly, affectionately. He knows it’s formal, but, Yuuri— _Yuuri, listen_ —go ahead and give it a tug. Loosen it a little. Take it off him. It’s starting to feel suffocating and he can’t take it anymore.

Suddenly, he’s pulled down by the grip of it, into a kiss.

Yuuri’s other palm becomes warm on him, coming around to the side of his neck. It has Victor kissing back in thoughtlessness with the arm with his phone falling to the side, feeling his heart beating stressed and excited. Or maybe he only realizes just then that it’s been like this since they left the table.

“I was just teasing, you know that, right?” Yuuri says under hot breath, scattering aching touches to Victor’s frame, finding warmth somewhere inside the flaps of Victor’s coat and around his lower back. They stand there, pressed up close together like this. “You’re making me feel so bad with your pouty face. I didn’t mean to say what I did like that, that I wouldn’t kiss you _just because_ you pay. You know I still would for... other reasons. Also, you’re not getting old, Victor. You’re barely in your quarter life crisis. Why do you look like you’re about cry? Uahhh—hey, hey! I love you a lot, okay? Okay? So much!”

Victor pulls Yuuri’s waist back in when Yuuri keeps ducking around trying to get a better look at his face, to see if he really is crying. Victor teeters on his feet, burying himself into bundles of coat and warm woollen scarf haphazardly strewn around Yuuri’s neck in a hurry. He leans in until his mind becomes fuzzy again and places his lips to the underside of Yuuri’s jaw, having him gasping out a sharp and chastising, “ _Victor_.”

Victor thinks he’s better than this. He usually has more mind than this, scorn on the tip of his tongue. He’s battle-hardened and hates frivolous things.

“Sometimes right after people say they love me, they say I’m unlovable.”

He really can’t stand this. Why does it feel like he’s about to come apart at the seams?

Yuuri physically stiffens under him, pinching Victor’s arm. He makes sure Victor looks at him, another hand stroking the back of his head, feeling like heaven. “Don’t ever say that.”

“Sorry.”

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Victor.”

“…I’m feeling really dizzy.”

The hand Yuuri has on him, ruffling his hair, is feeling so good. Yuuri whispers to him, maybe just a little bit sad, “I know. And _I_ am sorry for earlier.”

Victor sniffs, tightening his arms around Yuuri. “I know you didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, too.”

“For what?”

“For… for…” Victor sways into him, hoping they both don’t stumble carelessly into the bushes. “I don’t remember. I can’t remember a lot of things.”

He really is drunk. He’s a weepy and exhausted drunk from the sweet torture of waiting, waiting, always waiting, for Yuuri to finally take him. He wants to hurry and be Yuuri’s, forever and ever and ever.

“You saved my life, Yuuri. I mean it. You ground me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’d be sitting over there in the bushes, probably.”

“I’d be miserable, that’s what. Can you hold me really tight? You owe me for earlier, Yuuri.”

“Of course.”

“Okay. And… kiss me more.”

“Yes, yes…!”

-

How did this happen? ...Really? Victor wonders, thinking as far back as he can remember. How did this happen? He has no idea.

“I’m sober,” Victor whines, taking whole fistfulls of Yuuri’s white linen shirt and pulling at it from the back, roughly out of his pants. He slurs, “Please fuck me now.”

Yuuri doesn’t seem much different, breathing hard into the spot on Victor’s neck that he’d been devoting an awful lot of time to.

“Wait, you’re clearly not sober. I’ll get you off and we’ll call it a night, okay?” Yuuri tries his best to compromise, Victor knows this. He hadn’t prepared himself at all. Yuuri’s just being reasonable.

“I want to touch you,” Victor mumbles into his cheek anyway, stubborn and on the verge of going insane.

He slides his hands up Yuuri’s skin, pushing the shirt up and hugging Yuuri to him. It’s hot and overheated but not quite right. Yuuri hovers over him but doesn’t fully reciprocate, sitting between Victor’s legs and clearly thinking through what his options are. As Victor gazes blearily up at him, Yuuri waits for Victor to succumb to his exhaustion and fall asleep.

But Victor holds on. This is… obviously their next stage, isn’t it? He nips into Yuuri’s mouth after pulling him down for another kiss. He can’t imagine leaving things the way they are. It feels incomplete. He needs more. He wants to consummate their love.

“Don’t you want this?” Victor draws out with such sensuality, not willing to admit he might not actually be able to last that long himself. “Don’t you want me…?”

“Of course I do,” Yuuri bites out, coarse, ripping his fingers through the sheets on either side of Victor. He breathes a frustrated sigh but can’t seem to voice any of his concerns. Or rather, presumes Victor wouldn’t listen to them anyway.

“Then…” Victor holds a hand to Yuuri’s cheek, bringing him in to lick a stripe along Yuuri’s jawline. It seems to soften Yuuri a little. “Can’t you imagine how it might feel for us, love, how it _would_ feel? Your hand laced in mine. I get to a point that you’ve never quite seen before. I’m making noises you’ve never heard before. It’s so exciting. Only you can do this to me. It’s unbearably warm but it feels hotter than it is. It’s a good heat. It feels _so_ good. You can no longer think about anything. You’ve forgotten all your worries. I’m writhing and desperate and I want you to keep going and you don’t want to stop. At this point, it seems nearly impossible to. You want to mess me up so bad. I cling to you and can’t stop moaning your name, just you, _Yuuri, Yuuri_ …”

Yuuri kisses him hard, throwing him backwards against the pillow, maybe just so Victor would stop talking, or maybe because he just can’t take it anymore.

But it works. Victor melts into it completely, wrapping a leg around Yuuri’s back, bringing him in closer.

A zipper is undone and Yuuri’s hand dips into his pants.

“...Are you trying to kill me?” Yuuri gasps, squeezing his eyes shut, shaking, and then devolving into a growl, “You are.”

Victor tries to blink, gritting his teeth, and putting a hand to where Yuuri grips him. He’s going too fast. But Yuuri has Victor exactly where he wants him, pushing against him, over the annoying barrier of their pants, but it only makes Victor want more. Yuuri promises that they’ll go deeper than this, feel better than this. Hotter. Closer. Some other time. Which is both disappointing and utterly irresistible.

Victor closes his eyes.

“ _Ah…_ ”

In the midst of it, Yuuri warns him to never, ever put the words he’d just said down on paper. Not in a letter. Not through the mail where some postal worker or nosey neighbour has an off chance of opening it up and reading it. Yuuri probably has no idea if this is sinking in—Victor has shit hearing after all.

But Yuuri can’t sit still, he becomes so restless. He looks like a completely different person without his glasses, more pure, his real authentic self. Victor reaches out into the air, brushing his fingers against Yuuri’s bare cheekbone feeling so flushed warm and then gently to the corner of his eye.

He looks so beautiful, so ethereal. He’s giving Victor a look just like the one at that time. And Victor has to wonder: does anybody else see this, when Yuuri gets like this? Or is it only him that’s affected so?

He can hear the quiet piano swelling in his ears in the moments between when he can catch his breath. He inhales, letting the invisible music flow through him, relaxing all at once. “We should… have Chopin playing in the background… you skate to Chopin so often.”

Even with such a look of concentration, Yuuri peeks at him through the haze of his arousal, trying to contain his soft kitten pants as they eventually morph into the beginnings of another cry.

“Victor…”

Something wet falls on Victor’s face which he brushes away before rubbing a thumb along Yuuri’s cheek. “Are these sex tears?” he asks, soothingly. “From feeling so good?”

“No...!!”

“Oh, oka—”

Yuuri gets way too fast, way too soon. Victor holds hopelessly to the pillow, other hand somewhere in the realm of where Yuuri has them grasped together, ultimately not letting Victor contribute very much. Yuuri’s lips descend upon him like an overwhelming tide—strong and forthcoming yet indescribably gentle. Soft, soft, soft. And then Victor shivers so hard he thinks he might break.

Yuuri collapses against him, tired and exhausted, emotionally exhausted.

He sniffs loudly, but the fact that his panting is still mixed with the occasional keening moan makes the dissatisfaction in Victor all the more palpable. Yuuri is still hard, probably wants to keep going. But Victor is beat, turning his head the side and sinking into the pillow in embarrassment. He can’t help the way his body was built, okay.

Yuuri’s own body is heavy on him, chest heaving. His arm slides up the mattress until it reaches across for the dresser with the box of tissues on it, scrambling blindly around before his fingers knock it clean off the table. Victor has to muffle a laugh as Yuuri's arm hangs dejectedly off the side of the bed. “Shit. I know… okay… I know I’ll have to get it eventually. I know… _ahh_ , if I want something, I have to work for it…”

Victor slings an arm around Yuuri’s neck, bringing his forehead up to his lips to place a kiss. “That’s sweet. Shall I finish you in my mouth now?”

**Author's Note:**

> yuuri katsuki is the first to successfully land a quad axel in competition in the 2022 Winter Olympics. 
> 
> tumblr: [cofferi](http://cofferi.tumblr.com)


End file.
